~ life is a journey

Apple Never Invented Anything – Monday Note (Sept, 2012)

The same chef was involved in all these creations. He didn’t write the code or design the hardware, but he was there in the kitchen — the “executive chef” in trade parlance — with a unique gift for picking ingredients and whipping up unique products.

Where does talent reside? Having access to commonly available ingredients or in the subtlety, the creativity — if not the magic — of their artful combination? Why are the great chefs so richly compensated and, yes, imitated? Alain Ducasse, Alain Senderens, and Joel Robuchon might be out of our price range, but Pierre Herme’s macarons are both affordable and out of this world — try the Ispahan, or the salted caramel, or… (We’ll note that he opened his first boutique in Tokyo, where customers pay attention to details.)

In cars, Brand X (I don’t want to offend) and BMW (I don’t drive one) get their steel, aluminum, plastics, rubber, and electronics from similar — and often the same — suppliers. But their respective chefs coax the ingredients differently, with markedly different aesthetic and financial outcomes.

Did IBM invent the PC? Did HP invent the pocket calculators or desktop computers that once put them at the top of the high tech world? Did Henry Ford invent the automobile.

So, yes, if we stick to the basic ingredients list, Apple didn’t invent anything…not the Apple ][, nor the Macintosh, not the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad…to say nothing of Apple Stores and App Stores. We’d seen them all before, in one fashion or another.

And yet, we can’t escape a key fact: The same chef was involved in all these creations. He didn’t write the code or design the hardware, but he was there in the kitchen — the “executive chef” in trade parlance — with a unique gift for picking ingredients and whipping up unique products.